IQANZ_blog - 8 Mistakes New Project Managers Make

8 Mistakes New Project Managers Make And The Lessons They Learn

by Nicki Carruth | Nov 23, 2021 | Project Assurance

We know as well as anyone in the project industry: being a project manager isn’t easy. While a tremendously gratifying career path, there are challenges that a PM faces that can catch the inexperienced off guard. Any PM should be secure in the knowledge that there are numerous mistakes or experiences that every project manager goes through. Part of growing as a PM is coming out the other side of these moments with new learnings to apply to the next project. In this article, we’ll cover some of these common mistakes and what can be learned from them. We’re not going to suggest project managers can always avoid these – but staying conscious of these events can help navigate them calmly and remain philosophical.

1) Not doing enough research into the background of a project

Like many jobs and challenges in life, preparation really is key for a PM. When a project manager joins a project, they may be doing so at the very beginning of that business initiative, or they may be coming on board partway through. In the case of longer-term public sector projects, it’s common for multiple project managers to be involved at various stages.

Regardless, the project manager needs to understand the parameters they’re dealing with in a project. This means building a clear picture of:

Why was the project created in the first place?
What business outcomes is it designed to create?
Who was initially the driving force behind the project?
When was the project started and how long has it been running for?
How are the project team and organisation structured to help this project be delivered?
What previous projects have occurred that relate to this project, and what success or failure did these have?
Are there any stakeholders or teams that may have a negative perception of the project due to past occurrences or perceived lack of value?

Fact-finding as a project manager will take some time and plenty of conversations. But it’s going to provide so much more context as the PM embarks on delivery that they’ll be equipped with a much better decision-making ability going forward.

Conversely, a project manager who hasn’t done their homework is in store for more conflict, repeating mistakes and less than optimal project outcomes. The nuances of a project and why it exists is tremendously important for a PM to deliver a great outcome for the business.

A common lesson learned when a project manager rushes into the doing before the learning is that it’s far better to take your time in the beginning – there’s a lot of time saved in the long run when you consider the number of meetings, emails, calls and backtracking that may be done when decisions are made without all the facts.

2) Spending time with each member of the project team

A project manager has the tall task of balancing the timeline, budget and people involved. While a project team may operate differently from a standard business unit, looking after the people is still paramount to delivering a good result. Project managers need to ensure that each member of the team is able to complete their job effectively. They will also want to stay close to their team to gain valuable intel about the project’s level of health and likelihood of success. PMs rely on their people to provide early indications of a challenge that may require adjustment of timeframes, budget or stakeholder relationships.

Each member of a project delivery team should be engaged with a project manager on a regular basis. While group meetings are important, the 1-1 format reassures each team member that they play an important role in the project. It’s common for new project managers, distracted by the various commitments to leadership, steering committees and stakeholders to inadvertently deprioritise their delivery team, but this can quickly lead to reduced engagement and inefficiencies. The lesson to be learned here is that a project manager’s schedule must carve out time for one on one discussion. Alternatively, a PM may delegate some of this out to ‘leads’ within a team, who can in turn ladder up this information. The outcomes project managers should aim for is a) engaged staff and b) maximum visibility of team workload.

3) Not pushing back on unrealistic stakeholder expectations

This may be one of the trickiest parts of being a new project manager, and unfortunately only gets easier through experience. There’s no way to effectively learn the art of pushing back – or, to put it more positively, ‘resetting expectations’ . When a project manager is focused on ensuring the Gantt chart is up to date and costs are under control, an unhappy or demanding stakeholder can knock things off-axis.

The experienced project manager learns how to triage difficult people and requests, putting up healthy boundaries between the delivery team and those with an interest in the project.

It’s crucial to put up such boundaries. A stakeholder may be a leader within a business unit that is somewhat affected by the project – but typically in any large organisation, their concerns are only part of the puzzle. When stakeholders ask for a change, challenge a decision or demand scope change, this is not simply a conversation between the PM and that person – it affects all other stakeholders, too. A change to a project can pull resources from one focus to another, meaning that one stakeholder’s request could negatively impact another’s interests in the project.

All this is why a PM will over their career become comfortable with saying no – in the most professional, courteous manner of course! They’ll also develop into expert negotiators and in some cases where multiple stakeholders are involved, mediators.

Sometimes a project team member will be approached directly by a stakeholder with a request for a feature or information. This is often done so without any bad intent, but a project manager does need to get in the middle of these interactions to make sure the team’s time and project deliverables are protected.

Having reliable points of escalation for the project manager is crucial – this can be determined by the project steering committee and/or the leader responsible for hiring that project manager. A PM should have the support in place to feel empowered to push back if needed.

4) Under budgeting the project

Planning a budget is rarely solely down to a project manager at the beginning of a project’s life, but they may be involved in this in some capacity. As the project progresses, the PM is very much involved in the management of the budget and how it’s being spent.

As budgeting for different stages is put together, a common mistake is being too optimistic about the delivery capacity of each team member on a given day. While projects often include contractors whose remit is largely dominated by work itself, PMs need to consider all the peripheral activities a project team must embark on outside of their productivity – think standups, longer team meetings, informal conversation about the deliverables, 1-1 catch-ups, troubleshooting – there’s numerous time-consuming activities that are part and parcel of a project. If these are not taken into account when establishing budget and timeframe, there’s a high chance that initial budgets will not be sufficient to cover resources.

Beyond the project delivery team though, are the costs of vendors, platforms and materials. If you’re working on a technology project, the delivery may require significant investment in existing technologies such as a payment gateway or security. If the needs of the project aren’t exactly realised, there’s a potential for the additional budget being needed down the track.

PMs should make sure that their budgets contain contingency for people and technologies. It’s not uncommon for a large project to significantly change partway through based on evolving requirements.

5) Unclear scoping of deliverables

Scope. It’s a word every PM hears a dozen times or more each day. And while it’s enough to make even the most seasoned project manager shudder, scoping a project properly empowers everyone to do their best work and focus on the task at hand. If the outcomes are unclear, the delivery team will not have a common purpose they’re driving towards which can result in seriously fragmented deliverables. An expensive project is no forum for abstract or open briefs – the activities and outcomes must be 100% clear for all those involved.

A project manager who hasn’t got clear on the scope is incredibly vulnerable to the risks of ‘stakeholder interpretation’, whereby a fuzzy scope can be taken a certain way and used to place pressure on the project team to deliver in a certain way.

The scope isn’t the PM’s job to create in the first place – certainly not alone. A steering committee and even senior leadership will need to scope the project properly. But a project manager is responsible for defining that scope to the team and wider business – and they’ll need to protect it for the project’s duration.
A common learning a new project manager will have with the scope is that when it’s not consistently reinforced to the team or business, delivery can quickly go off-road. This can result in backtracking or overspending.

6) Not delegating tasks to the team

Project Managers have a plethora of duties placed on their shoulders. Because multitasking is inherent within the PM lifestyle and job description, this mindset can easily flow into a mentality where everything is the project manager’s job. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. In fact, a project manager who is successful has mastered the art of delegating out responsibilities to their team. A project manager on a big project will typically have a mini team within the team (sometimes called a project office) who is made up of project coordinators, administrators and other managers. If this structure exists, some of the tasks involved in governance, budget, scheduling and meetings can be split out amongst the team.

More broadly though, the project manager should lean on the expertise of their delivery team to help make decisions, communicate with stakeholders and progress forward. Who is better positioned to assess the security benefits of one proposed system over another? A PM or a system architect? The PM brings the right people in the room to have the right conversations.

The project manager should not ever feel like the project wins or fails by their hand alone. A steering committee should provide ample support around the PM to deliver, and when required help provides additional guidance.

7) Not hiring enough people to deliver

Much like unchecked optimism can burn a business on a budget, so too can it when simply not having enough headcount to get through the workload. Expectations around what even the most senior talent can bring to the project are so often higher than what’s possible. Whilst a project over hiring will burn money, under-hiring will burn time – and people out. The good news with hiring is that it doesn’t need to happen at once. In fact, proper project planning can see resource levels coordinated with phases or sprints so that the project doesn’t leave any personnel waiting for work or indeed piled with too much of it on their plate. New project managers have the disadvantage of inexperience in terms of recognising whether the project resources are going to be sufficient. This shouldn’t be held against new PMs, however, as the tell-tale signs of a project’s resourcing needs can often be subtle. Proceeding with the best possible assumptions around delivery is acceptable and few projects get it perfect on the first try. A business analyst will often be present early on in the process to help the organisation outline who and what they need to deliver. As PMs hire and manage multiple teams, they’ll start to understand what each type of resource is capable of and start matching the size of the team to the tasks required.

8) Low communication with the team and stakeholders on progress

Connecting the project team with the progress being made on the project against goals is crucial. Without this, the delivery of work can be directionless and worse still, team members can become weary and lose motivation. Since the adoption of methodologies like agile, the cadence of meetings helps to bring all the team into progress on a frequent basis, with sprints almost acting as mini-projects where there’s a clear list of tasks and outcomes attached.

Communication on the project as a whole should be prioritised on a semi-regular basis as well. This means providing a broad view of the project to date, where things started and what’s been achieved. This can be communicated more formally in a meeting, but email communication with a report can also help, too.

Then there’s the other critical part of communication as a PM – to other stakeholders. That means senior leadership team, steering committee, other business unit leaders and any external stakeholders like ministers, other agencies, and even the end-user of the solution. As a new project manager, communicating progress can feel like a distraction when focusing on delivering. But without taking everyone else along on the ‘journey’, there’s a greater risk of a PM needing to deal with questions or decisions that derail the project’s progress. If stakeholders don’t have visibility of the successes and challenges, they won’t have a proper frame of reference and may not be able to provide their input in a valuable way.

Support for project managers with expert quality assurance

We know what project managers go through; we’re made up of experienced PMs ourselves. It’s not an easy job and no project manager should be expected solely to deliver a project to success. Project assurance from an external provider like IQANZ will help to ensure the project – and its personnel – are set up for success. If you are looking to put the measures and support in place for your project manager and their team, let’s chat!